


A Lustrum Is Too Long

by FandomTrash



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Fluff and Angst, I'm Sorry, Jason is Rachel, Light Angst, M/M, Nico is Chloe, Nico would totally be fucking Chloe like cmon, No Rewind Powers, Past Relationship(s), Percy is Max, References to Drugs, Smoking, THE LIFE IS STRANGE AU THAT NOBODY WANTED BUT ME GODDAMMIT, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, life is strange au, we all know what i mean shut up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2019-01-20 21:57:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12442611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FandomTrash/pseuds/FandomTrash
Summary: Five years in New York and I come back to see my best friend isn't my best friend anymore, and somebody broke his heart while I was gone. Nothing's the same, but...maybe that's okay.New beginnings, or whatever, he says to me. I can't help but smile.





	A Lustrum Is Too Long

Fuck, this is a...no, it's not a throwback. It's – it's a new leaf, I guess, a splash of cold water to the face. Because you're different than when I last saw you; all your clothes are black and you've frosted your hair a little in shades of electric-blue that I never knew would suit you but it does. You swear more; _hella_ being one of your favored words. You used to hate that word. It didn't make sense to you, but suddenly it's all that ever comes out of your mouth along with _fuck, step-whore,_ and _motherfucker_.

So. You smoke now. Sometimes even pot, the occasional joint's scent sticking to your clothes until you next wash them, and your dad's worried about you. But you don't seem to care about that anymore; or anything at all. Like you've lost your touch. You're meant to have a half-sister on the way. Your dad told me about it;Such they're going to name her Hazel, maybe. Or Bianca. But your step mother told me that you completely freaked at the idea, and smashed up your mom's favorite vase over the matter. So Hazel it is.

You've been expelled from the academy for a couple years now – two or three, you said you've stopped counting. Such a shame; you'd been running on a scholar ship, and now you're lounging around in the old junkyard now. Your mom's car was left there, totaled from the accident you've never talked about. There're missing persons' posters all over the town, that weren't there before. Jason Grace, I think. Blond, blue eyes – electric-blue, a scarily intense pair of eyes. They match the color you've died your hair.

I asked you about this Jason guy, at the junkyard. Apparently you spent a lot of time with him; knew his favorite songs, new his favorite foods and that his dad was the DA of the place (on top of being a cheating asshole.) _Jason's off in LA by now._ You say. Like a mantra, something to reassure yourself with, but something tells me you don't believe it. You were meant to run away with him, while I was gone. This town never really did have anything to offer you, but there's less of it keeping you here now. _I just wasn't fast enough, I guess._ Then you'd smile. _This place woulda killed him if he stayed any longer._

When I asked further than that – if you got together, if you loved him like you used to love me, you get angry. Your face flares red like the temperament you've never fully controlled, and I remember that you nearly crashed us when I first asked you. _Jason – everybody loved him._ You'd say. The conversation would stop after that, leaving silence between us and me fiddling with my instant camera. You're still mad about that, too. I know, because your dad told me. He says you...you weren't yourself after I left.

But you seem fine – that's a lie. That's a lie. I'm your best friend, and it looks like that's not true anymore either. Because you love Jason, that Jason Grace that litters the town in loose fliers that scatter the streets. Everybody on campus still remembers you; they say you tagged the bathrooms before you left, and even got Mr D to quit his security job after being walked all over for so long. I wonder how he's doing now. You owe Dakota so much money; for all the...the drugs, I guess. Or favors. You pulled a gun to him the first week I was back, and I never thought you'd **kill** somebody. You eyes told a different story.

A lot of things have changed, I guess. Annabeth is suddenly a popular girl willing to suck dick to win the awards ceremony, and half the people I used to know I barely recognize. You told me that Jason was something special, one of those nights where you would take me to the junkyard and we'd lay in the bed of your truck and watch the stars. _He...he treat me right, Percy._ You whispered, _He was somethin' special. Everybody loved him, but not – not like I..._ and then you'd trail off, and never continue the train of thought.

My stomach twists whenever your eyes grow distant, far away and back in time to a place when Jason was around with his stupidly perfect blond hair and those disgustingly brilliant eyes that have you in tears and smashing things with a bat for a while. You don't let me reconcile you like I used to. Now, you just growl at me and shove me away, tears gone as quickly as they came, and you'd just stare at your mom's wrecked car across the junkyard for a while. It's pretty morbid that you hang in the junkyard. Where your mom's car is.

It looks worse than when the accident had actually happened. Something tells me you found it and completely ruined it. There's a little shack in the junkyard that has your iconic scribbles all over the walls, hand-made decorations up and a bracelet I found there. You snatched it from me, hissing, before angrily jamming it onto your wrist. I assume it was Jason's. It has a little, flashy lightning symbol on it, and the little cubes with letters on them say **w o l f c l u b**. You never told me the relevance.

Your step-mother says that you'll come around with time. You say that she infests the house with her stupid flowers and _frilly fucking idiocies_ that you despise so much. Your father says he misses his son. But he misses his daughter more, and I watch your eyes dim a little more each time.

* * *

I miss you a lot, y'know. So much, I miss you so damn much when I'm stuck through grueling classes on how to catch something just right in my camera lens, even though I already know how. I spent five years in New York learning about it for fuck's sake. I bring it up, and it appears to be a mistake mentioning that I ditched everything for NYU. Your teeth grit together, knuckles going white with the grip on the steering wheel, and you instinctively speed up a little more. The cops we race past don't even turn on their sirens.

You don't apologize anymore. You stopped doing that a while back, I believe, when your mom and sister died and there was nobody around to remind you to be polite. You saw no need in it, when the only people's opinion you cared about was their's and they were gone. Sure, you dad was another that you held so highly, but all respect for him went out the window the day he announced your step-mother would be moving in. _So no,_ you shrug, _why should I give a fuck 'bout what people see me as?_

You say that my friend Rachel – a total art fenatic with a passion for silly sci-fi movies – is head over heels for me, and you ask when I'm finally going to ask her out. I shrug, because I don't plan to ask her out, I didn't even really know she seemed to be so obviously crushing on me. I don't think you'd appreciate me telling you that it's **you** who I'm head over heels for, just like you were for Jason, but Jason's gone, in LA somewhere where the sun never sets and the city never sleeps. And he left you behind for the glory. Just like I did.

It seems to be an occurring theme for you; everything you love leaving.

But I'm back, and it's a fact you can't seem to grasp. I see this in how you look at me when you drive, like if you look back to the road I might disappear. So what if you run into a tree, or the train that crosses the road to the junkyard? You seem like you'd rather die and have me be your last memory than look back and find that I was never there. It's why your voice quietens a little when we're in public, like I'm not actually here, and you'll look crazier than you are. Because you've always been crazy and it's a trait you used to embrace.

Our first hug – the first one in **five years** – is climactic, emotional, and everything I had wanted when I first returned to this shitty dead-end town. It's by the lighthouse, when it starts snowing in the middle of April. And for a while, it's just us, and it's bliss. Your hand is an anchored weight on my waist, and it takes me a moment to realize that you've...you've grown. That, no, you're not a stranger that took my best friend away, you're not the shell of something you once were. You're still Nico di Angelo, with your sad eyes and nonexistent smile.

You've matured, in some instances, but I don't see that side of you much. I know you when you're crude, rebellious and sarcastic, whip-sharp retorts and smirks with a serrated edge to them. It makes me love you all the more, and I wonder if the intensity I feel in my heart whenever you laugh resembles anything you ever felt for that Jason Grace you can't let go of. Probably not, since you talk of him like he was a god, or something close to one, with this tone of far away endearment I've never heard you talk in before.

It hurts, yeah. You're still hung up on this guy that I never met, never knew, and you say that maybe we would've gotten along. That idea crumbles when you find Dakota with another one of Jason's bracelets and nude pictures of him in the back of Dakota's RV. Shit hits the fan for a while, and you spit harsh words and leave the RV with the pictures and a stash of the dealer's weed. For a while, we just sit in the truck at the junkyard, and you stare at the images like you've never seen Jason before. You stick them up in your room.

Your dad wrinkles his nose at it, before noticing who it is and his eyes softening around the edges in ways I never knew the man was capable of. _Nico_ , he'd muttered, turning to his son. Nico was too busy tacking away on the old computer that rested on his desk, unbothered of the bong that sat in plain view or all the cigarettes in the ashtray for your dad to sneer at in disapproval. _Nico, this isn't healthy_ , he'd said. You only shrugged, flipping him off whilst you looked through the town's reports of missing people. For any sign that Jason Grace had been discovered in the vicinity, any sign that he had made it to LA, like he wanted.

Your dad left after that. Patted my shoulder, a look of apology on his face, before heading downstairs. I remember that night, that night you let me sleep over because it was too dark to start walking back to the dorms, you stayed up for hours. Not crying, or reminiscing. You just sat on the bed, eerily still and the moon painting you varying shades of monochrome that I never knew would fit you so well. I took a picture, the sound of my camera whirring an almost deafening sound. Turning to me, you smiled. My heart shattered.

So no, I tell myself. I haven't lost you. I simply have another version of you, one that I never knew I would come to meet, but have had the honor of doing so. You smoke, even drink. I forget why I was put off by that.

* * *

You remind me of those vintage album covers. Window rolled down, leather jacket and hair tousled in the wind. Cigarette in hand and the calmest look you've had on your face for a while now. I take another picture, brushing the camera softly afterward. You gave me your mother's old camera, after mine broke. It feels like something precious in my hands, something I must hold with great care. It's delicate, in ways, and I know that if I mistreat it, you'd feel something snap inside you. Even though you tell me that _seriously, I don't care._

You confess little things to me. That you and Jason kissed – more than once, that it felt like something sparked inside you every time you did. That you still have nightmares. They consist of your mother still being alive, of your sister taunting you from the grave and both of them peering down at you with contempt for your evil doings. You took up guitar, too. When I found it, asked you about it, your face flushed a shade of red that told me that the instrument is special. _Jason's_ , you said, _I totally fucking forgot he left that here._

So now it's always in your truck. You never leave without it, just in case you want to play it. Because Jason had taught you how to play it, taght you how to hold it just right even though you're left handed and he was ( _is_ , he says, he talks about the blond like it's the present,) right handed. He was (is) good at singing, you tell me, that he could make angels crash to the ground, and it hurts to hear that you think so highly of him, yet barely cared that I had returned to town the first few weeks.

Watching you and your step-mother argue is nothing short of excruciatingly sad. Every time you interact with her, it's clear that you hate her with every ounce of your being, and she looks at you like you're nothing more than a mistake, an accident that wasn't meant to happen. She's pregnant, making it a even worse, and causes one to wonder if this is to be a healthy environment for a growing child. I know you want to punch her, all the time, but will yourself not to solely for the fact that she is indeed pregnant and it could kill the baby.

One night, after a long day, you blast the music so loud that I can feel the walls vibrate. You dance on your bed in a way that your hips sway in a mesmerizing fashion and your beanie falls off to show me the roots of your black hair growing back through. You shout at me, a grin plastered to your face. It's something I haven't seen in so long, and I can't deny you. So I get up on the bed with you, dance to the rock music that blares so loud I can't make out the words and laugh til my heart's content. The look you give me makes me fly.

The morning after, me in desperate need of new clothes, you simply shrug and dump some clothes on my lap. They don't look like something you'd wear, and they're a size too big for me, but I put them on anyway. A blue flannel, torn up jeans and a shirt with an eagle on it. I go downstairs to say good morning to your dad to hear him startle and half-shout _Jason!_ And it makes my heart sink. You'd given me Jason's clothes. It makes me wonder if you had been trying to bring Jason back, like if I wore his clothes, it'd seem like he was back.

Later, you do a double-take, thus not confirming my thoughts. _Why the fuck are you wearing his clothes?_ You ask, and I shrug; tell you that you gave them to me. There's a blank look in your eyes for the rest of the day. You drop me off on campus, and throughout the day, people stare at me. Annabeth confronts me, unfamiliar scrutinizing coming from her. She asks if I think I'm worthy of being the next Jason Grace. I tell her no, that you gave me the clothes for the day, and everybody scoffs and rolls their eyes at the sound of your name.

Something tells me nobody cares about you anymore, and it's a revelation that makes me want to scream. All those friends you used to have, the good grades and the scholarship. All gone. Blown from your life, from your grasp, and I know that it angers you, too, even if you pretend not to care. You care because it puts your family through hell with bills – the property damage you cause, the reports that wrack up on your record that makes your father shake his head and your step-mother insist to send you to a boarding school.

The broken boy from the broken home.

The dropout druggie with nothing to live for.

Sometimes you talk about running away. Swiping whatever cash you can get and hitting the road, maybe chase after Jason in LA or somewhere completely different. Then you look at me, wildly audacious quality to the way you smile, a little unhinged, a little not-there, and you whisper that I could come too. That I should come, that we should just hop into your truck and leave this _stupid fucking dead-end, good for nothing shithole._ But then you let go of the idea after a few tokes of your joint, and you're docile for a while longer.

It's sad watching you fall to pieces like this, but I love you, but I think you know that, but I think you don't care.

* * *

After some time, you talk about Jason less. It's like you hadn't had anybody to talk to in a while, and now that it's off your chest, it's off your mind, too. But he comes up, every now and then. Whenever your look at photos of you and him fondly, or you brush your fingers over the bracelet your love so dearly. I ask if you miss him and every time you roll your eyes: _of course I miss him, fucker. Isn't – isn't it obvious?_ Then you'll look at me, head cocked, and I barely hear you murmur _but I missed you for longer._ I feel warm inside.

There's a period where you start...you start **blossoming** again, I think. You perk up a little more, I see less cigarettes in your ashtray and your wallet is always a couple dollars heavier than whenever you went to deal with Dakota. Your eyes light up a little differently than they did, your smiles are softer and more genuine, more inside jokes that **I know, that I experienced** are told and they make me laugh so hard my stomach hurts and I start crying.

It's a good feeling.

To have you lean against my shoulder and chuckle into my ear, feeling your heart heavy in your chest as we simmer down from our high. Then the air grows intimate, in ways I've dreamed of, and when I turn, you're looking at me with an admiration to your eyes I never knew would be directed to me. Your hand travels to my jaw, mine knot in your shirt and you inch closer, breath on mine like you're a drowning man. Our mouths meet, and everything is forgotten for me to fully embrace this experience.

It lasts for only seconds, before you pull back. In your eyes, on your face, there is **love.** There is love, bright and burning, and I start to wonder if this is how you felt for Jason, if this is how you kissed him, but your lips are back on mine before I start feeling my heart get torn from my chest. The truck is a cramped space, but you clamber into my lap to grip my hair better, pull me to you in a desperate way. I drink up the soft sounds you make, the kiss turning sloppy when I smile into it. You pull back again, “Shit, Percy.”

The way you say my name makes me feel complete. “Y-Yeah,” I gasp, before dragging you back down. You murmur sweet nothings, and my hands make a home on your hips. Pulling back for breath again, you rest your head in the crook of my neck, continuing to admit to sins, “I love you. _Fuck_ , I love you, Percy. I love you so damn much, this isn't fair.” It makes me start chuckling again, disbelief evident as I clutch you to me. I manage to catch your eyes, see that no, there is no room for anybody else but me.

Jason was a former lover, I conclude. He was there when I was not, and he was the only one there for my best friend when I was in New York. But I'm back, and he's gone now, and this boy in my lap is somebody I've always known in my heart. Yes, your hair is still highlighted this shade of electric-blue I never thought would suit you, but it does, and there will be memoirs of Jason's existence, because you can't just forget about something. Jason was somebody to you, but I am somebody else entirely. Somebody you've always wanted.

I gather this from the way your eyes sparkle, ignite with internal flames and spark like shooting stars. I'm a drowning man, I muse, as I pull you to me again and hug you close. “Welcome back, dude,” You mutter. I nod, “It's good to be home.” Outside the truck is the silhouettes of junk, and his mother's car glimmers with it's rusted doors and smashed windows in the moonlight, but just like everything else, it was something to you once, but I am something else. Something you want.

I find solace in how I can freely thread my fingers through your hair, stare at the picture of Jason and you plastered to the inside of the sun visor. He has strikingly blond hair, and eyes the same intensity as your hair, and he smiles like it's the end of the world and you are the only thing worth living for, and I suppose that is one thing we'll agree on. Maybe me and Jason would've gotten along after all. But there's one thing I'll always resent him for; he left. I left, we all left, and you have been alone since your mother and sister died.

And Jason Grace had the gall to leave you even more alone after feeding you hope.

“I'm not planning on leaving again,” I tell you. You look at me, in the dark, in the dim blue light of your makeshift light in the car, and you looked beautiful, “Well, let's hope not.” Cynical. Skeptical. I kiss you again, kiss your worries away kiss you until I can't breathe, because I love you, and I don't know how to convey it. “I'm not leaving you.” I sigh. He shrugs, hope a pitiful look to him, but he shrugs, and he shakes his head, “Everybody leaves, dude. Don't make promises you can't keep.”

I look to the scribble on your dashboard; **hopelessly hopeless**. I can't help but agree. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry. So, we all know Nico's gonna be fucking Chloe, because hot damn if I'm not having Nico be an angsty punk rocker chick/dude. I like this idea too much. I was sort of thinking that maybe it could've been maybe Percy - fuck maybe even Leo. (You'll understand those of you who have played/seen the latest episode of LIFE IS STRANGE: BEFORE THE STORM, or if you've actually seen/played the game at all) - for Rachel, but I wanted the Percico to be current, the main ship in this, not just a memory thing. And, yes, I know the fate of Rachel and everything, but it's not canon compliant, since there's no powers or anything. So, for all we know, Jason _is_ LA living his modelling dream. I dunno, I just played the second episode of LIS: BTS, so it sort of hit me. But god, the second episode if like _whoa._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [American Boyfriend](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15086147) by [Blueskyportrait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blueskyportrait/pseuds/Blueskyportrait)




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